


Something Rich and Strange

by MountainRose



Series: Tempest [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: (it's subtle, AU: everyone has a tail, Aftermath of Torture, Badass Engineering, Gen, Gender Issues, Injury, Invasive Medical Exam, Manipulation, Medical Procedures, Obadiah Stane is a Dick, The Battery, Tony is a seahorse, Underwater Food Crops, Water Torture, altered mental state, but be warned), just go with it, merfic, non-binary genders, non-human biology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-10 05:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3278432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MountainRose/pseuds/MountainRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they're warning you about drowning, the say the oxygen in air is more than enough to keep you alive. They don't warn you that air <em>burns.</em></p>
<p>That breathing it is torture.</p>
<p>----------</p>
<p>Merpeople AU taken seriously. Heed the tags; this got dark quickly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. But Doth Suffer a Sea Change.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd, encouraged, facilitated, titled and inspired by Szzzt!
> 
> "Full fathom five thy father lies;
> 
> Of his bones are coral made;
> 
> Those are pearls that were his eyes;
> 
> Nothing of him that doth fade:
> 
> But doth suffer a sea-change
> 
> Into something rich and strange.
> 
> Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell
> 
> Burthen ding-dong
> 
> Hark! now I hear them, --
> 
> Ding-dong, bell."  
> \--The Tempest. Act 1, Scene 2.

 

"What is this, I feel like you're taking me to court-martial. Crack a smile." Tony said, grinning into the aftview mirror. The pilot's cheek twitched into part of a grin and their shoulders softened a degree or two. He loosened his tie, stretching his gill shields out; it'd been a long, hot day in punishingly salty water. Nothing like the roasting sun of Afghanistan to get the saline up.

"So, hey, what's a guy gotta do for some tunes around here? This boat got radio?"

"You sure, Mr. Stark? We're in real Gulf territory here, not going to get much of anything in English," the pilot called, over her shoulder.

"My god, you're a woman. I would not have called that. But, I suppose that's what we're going for: soldier first. How _is_ the new body armour working out?" Tony made a vague gesture in front of his lapels. "What with the anatomi--"

She laughed and took her eyes off the lane for a second to glare. "Watch it, sir; Ms. Potts gave us her nu--"

The boat jerked, and the shockwave tore Tony's tail free of his relaxed grip on the seat, sending him crashing into the door, shoulder first. The pressure cracked the windows and squeezed Tony's head until he thought it was gonna crack too, sending him ducking for cover, fins tucked close to his body and hands protecting his ears.

“Contact left!” the pilot yelled, the currentshield lighting up with fire as the humvee at point exploded. With the rush of displaced water came dust, billowing up over the humvee, clogging Tony's gills and turning good visibility into a mess of dust and smoke that burned the eyes.

"Shit! Stay in the vehicle, sir! Do not go outside! Jimmy, stay with Stark!"

Tony's ears were ringing, his lateral line aching, and her words were almost lost in the sudden chaos of gunfire. She tore out into the dust, her halfmoon kelp-camo tail vanishing into the dust cloud. The copilot was gone too; quicker than Tony could follow, the sound of his rifle marking him in the water briefly before getting lost in the ricochet of soundwaves.

The hull rattled, large calibre shot peppering the vehicle and breaking what glass was left, and Tony hunkered down, flinching away from the sharp shocks of bullet cavitation; so loud, it was palpable all over his body.

Then, silence.

The water trembled with aftershock, sudden stillness almost surreal, and the taste of blood filtered through, faint but undeniable. Tony's new friend, with the Midwestern accent and the mackerel tail, blanched from collar to helmet, fingers clenched so hard around his weapon that the knuckles were white. He shot a grimace Tony's way, glancing down at Tony's finless, coiled tail and slid his gun onto his back.

“ _shitshitshit--_ Sorry about this, sir, but we need to get out of here.” Jimmy leaned over and popped the door on Tony’s side, letting in a gout of even thicker dust.

"No, don--!” He cut off as the guard grabbed Tony’s jacket, his fingers scrambling to latch onto the flack vest underneath. Tony hastily pulled his dorsal fin close to his spine as he was pulled into a clumsy remora hold, his back against the Private’s ammo pack. “Fuck. I’m not--"

“Hundred meters in ten seconds sir. It’s better than staying here.”

He didn’t give Tony time to argue and powered out of the open door, into the murk. How he knew which way to cover, Tony couldn’t guess, and the water whipped past in blur of grit and ash.

Jimmy’s big, silver and blue tail was tipped with a sharp-edged crescent of opaque blue fin that sliced through the water hard enough for the crackle of fin-tip cavitation to ripple up Tony’s lateral line. He’d never swum so fast in his life, not under human power.

The silence was broken up by the ocean tearing roar of an RPG; they’d been spotted. Jimmy swore and pushed Tony down, towards the rocks, and powered upwards. Tony hunkered down, fingers white and aching with his grip on his cover, what the _fuck_ was Jimmy thinking, swimming up like that, and looked over his shoulder just in time to see the white streak of boiled water smack into Jimmy’s chest and detonate.

The phone he’d been gripping, ready to dial Rhodey, was blasted away in the shockwave.

Tony just had time to notice it was gone before he blacked out.

 

~~xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx~~

 

When he came to, there was no water in his lungs. He felt hollowed out, gored through. The bitter tang of electricity made his ‘line crawl and _there was no water._  

He drew in a deep gulping breath, but it wasn’t enough, the flow over his gills was too short; he was suffocating, there was no oxygen! He clawed at the _thing_ on his face, tearing off the tape--

“Ah, Ah, no. Stop that.”

Someone grabbed his wrists, folding his fins back against his forearms and pinning them to either side of his head. “You must _breathe,_ Stark. Not deep; fast. From here.” Something tapped Tony’s stomach -- _shirt! why am I naked no get off me--_ and he noticed the pain. Radiating out from the centre of his chest, pulling on his spine at the back and breaking open his breastbone; it was intolerable, burning and grinding, dangerous lances of it stabbing into his left arm-- Fear made it worse, made him try to run away from it, but each movement hurt too much.

“It will help with the pain, from the diaphragm, Ja Stark.”

Through the haze of oxygen deprivation, pain, he looked for his... assailant? But it was dark, and it hurt so much. His lateral line was ringing, barely able to tell him where the voice was coming from, but he wasn’t getting enough oxygen--

He panted, puffing water over his gills in fits and starts. _from the stomach._ It tasted like blood where it leaked into his mouth, he could smell it on his own breath; he was hurt, very hurt.

The rocket. It had been so familiar...model number 1812; shrapnel. His vest, punched through by it, billowing blood--

“What... wha...”

“You are a very lucky, Ja Stark, that I have seen this injury before.”

Tony blinked his eyes open and it wasn’t as dark, the walls didn’t seem to move anymore. the man leaning over him was a squid; large, fleshy fins on his flanks, transitioning smoothly into eight legs below his clothes, and a doctor. His breast pocket held a capped syringe, a watch, stethoscope around his neck.

“Shrapnel to the chest; nasty, bloody. But, slow to kill, so you live still. Longer than you should have, already; you have a pacemaker now, not top of the line, but enough.”

A doctor. Tony let his eyes close --it was easy, that was all they wanted to do-- and concentrated on his breathing. Broken ribs meant short, careful breaths. Lower waterflow. He had to preserve blood saturation, reduce usage, increase gain.

“ _Good_ , there you go...I thought I would have to sedate you, for a moment.”

_Might be better_ , Tony thought. _didn’t they have morphine_? ‘They’, who was ‘they’? Who had him? “Wh...where.”

“Some embedded in your sternum; lucky, some in the right lung, abdomen; not so lucky. Worst is headed towards your heart,” the doctor said, his voice heavy. “Each beat it ratchets in further. It will kill you. I am sorry... A week, perhaps.”

A high whine stole the water from his gills and he squeezed his eyes shut, his mind pinwheeling. They’d tried to kill him, saved him, now he was just going to die _anyway?_  

The fuck kind of sick justice was that; killed by his own bomb, just because they didn’t have a CT scanner or a venti--

“Wh--” He stopped and took careful breaths over his gills. “What t-tech do you have?”

“I have enough morphine to keep you happy, if that is what you wish, but--”

Tony gripped the doctors wrist hard, shaking his head. “I need... tools. Micrometer, copper wire, sealant. Map of heart, shrapnel. Steel.”

It took a while to grind out his plan, with no water to speak with, but the doctors ears rose in interest, pointed and unintimidated.

 

~~xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx~~

 

He ran his tongue over his teeth, woken up by the nasty, sticky sensation of salt desiccation; the water here was roasted to a good few drams above what he was used to. When he opened his eyes, the gritty-dank ceiling of the cave was lit in dark umber, each craggy tooth of rock picked out in shadow. The water tasted like smoke and blood when he breathed out and for a second, while it was empty, his chest felt almost normal.

He had to breathe eventually, though. From the diaphragm.

It didn’t hurt unbearably, at least.

“Good afternoon again, Ja Stark.”

Tony grunted and wafted water towards the squid on the far side of the room. “Did I pick a fight with a shark?”

Doc grunted, frowning and ears pinned back, and a blackish leg wrapped around Tony’s wrist and took his pulse. Wasn’t there something about shaking legs with a cephalopod? One bullet, eight barrels, fire away, fire away, havin’ a good time, fire...

“Ja Stark?”

“Hmm, what?” Tony mumbled, blinking up at the doctor. “Don’t call me ‘Ja’. Stark men are made of iron.” His tongue felt thick and stupid, his father's words out of place.

“Were that that were less literal,” the squid said.

There was something on his chest, metallic, he hadn’t been imagining it after all. “Did ‘t work?”

“I think you had better look for yourself.”

Doc pulled back the blankets to expose Tony’s chest and the contraption keeping him alive. He was in a cut-down fraction of his armored vest, tight over his ribs and one shoulder, with holes hacked out of the kevlar and cable composite to -- _jesus--_ accommodate a ring of cold steel wrapped in wire. Thick cables led off from there, through a thick black lump of circuitry wrapped in sealant tape and bolted to the vest, then on to their only power source. Pinkish dressings showed through the ring of the electromagnet in taped-down squares, and wires disappeared between the gauze. The pacemaker, to power his damaged heart, and a magnet to keep the shrapnel in place. The battery on the cot next to his hip looked like it was more fit for the trash than medical equipment, but the terminals were properly sealed, the cables thick and strong. It’d do until he could work out the next ...bit... What was that?

“Huh...”

There was one bandage he hadn’t noticed before, low on his stomach over a dull, throbbing ache. He tensed, ears back, and touched it gingerly; the fabric was older, stained.

“Ah... that would not have mattered, had we not invented this,” the squid tapped the chest plate. “Or had the surgery failed. But...it may heal, it is hard to tell.”

Tony gently peeled back the tape and pulled the bandage back. Underneath, his belly was scored with long, ragged lines and the edge of his pouch was torn, drifting slightly in the water. Instead of a faintly pink slit from bellybutton to pelvis, his brood pouch was limp and hanging open, the muscles torn and naked, blood-crimson brood membranes inside exposed to the sea. He made a painful sound in the back of his throat and pressed the edges of the injury back down on instinct; it shouldn’t be-- it shouldn’t _do_ that, it was supposed to stay-- stay closed and, and _secret--_

“I can make repairs, now you are stable but...”

“It doesn’t close, why doesn--” Tony gritted his teeth on the plaintive sound, covering up the exposed blood-rich membranes. It made his stomach turn, that just anyone could see inside him, and he stared down at the ragged edges, imagining the scars tearing back open if he moved wrong. “...’s alright, I wasn’t planning to carry, anyway... What’s the chances, right? Not many seahorses on Wall Street,” he babbled quickly, choking back horror. _pepperpepperpepper_ Pepper was the only seahorse on Wall Street, no chance, no chance now, never meant to, because she was an employee and-- He pressed his hands down a little too firmly, the bite of pain cutting off his rambling, terrified thoughts.

He was pretty sure he was about to throw up, his breath coming short and his stomach wretchedly empty; he could see inside, oh god...

“-- _breathe!_ You are fine, it will heal, please, Ja Stark.”

“Don’t--!” Tony snapped, hunching over his belly. “I’m not ‘Ja’, I’m not going to have eggs, I’m not gonna let--” he cut off with a whimper, because he’d never had that, never let anyone near  his pouch, that so-vulnerable skin. He’d never been with anyone who understood what it was like, to have a place ready to carry a baby right there, but be so afraid of what he’d do to a child--

Yinsen’s hands were tight on his shoulders, keeping him in place when it felt like he was being swept away.

He’d never even let anyone touch him there...a doctor, sometimes, but... never a person, never for pleasure, not even out of curiosity.

And now he was broken.

Yinsen held onto him, and Tony held his pouch together with his bare hands, trying not scream, trying to keep his head.

It worked briefly, but then the doc was pushing his hands out of the way and tearing off long strips of medical tape to hold the edges of his pouch together. The sudden flurry was jarring and Tony felt like he’d been cut loose in a storm, everything moving around him, unintelligibly.

“Hurry, Stark, can you rise?” Yinsen whispered harshly, glancing at the big iron doors and deftly rebandaging the injury to cover up that dreadful nakedness.

“I-- maybe? Still feel like--”

“Do it, do it now! Here,” the doctor pulled him up in the water, the blankets drifting down and leaving him naked, with his pouch and privates on display. He hunched in on himself in pain and humiliation, covering himself with a splayed out armfin. The doc hissed and clicked, pushing a zippered pant at him and hurrying to help him fit it over his hips with way more limbs than was strictly necessary. It pinched under his pelvic fins, but at least he was decent. The open water was cold, and Tony wriggled into the jacket the doc pushed at him gratefully, despite the fact it lacked a slit for his dorsal fin. He folded it flat down his spine, which was at least good for his posture, and curled as much of his tail around the cot leg as he could.

He wouldn’t stay up in the water without the additional support; he felt like someone had stuck a needle in his swim bladder and sucked all the buoyancy out. The doc propped him up on one side when he listed over without the stabilization of his dorsal fin, his tentacles shading from black-ish to dull brown with nerves.

“Talk to me doc, what--”

“Do not speak. Unless you know more _dvoryak_ than your reputation suggests, they will no more understand you than a cuttlefish can speak to a clam.”

Tony nodded and swallowed down nausea; he could feel it now, too; the subsonic water movements of a shoal approaching on the other side of the door.

Angry yelling erupted on the other side of the metal, along with the harsh rattle of weapon butts against plate. Fucking terrible thing to do to a gun, they’d be knocked out of alignment in weeks if they kept up shit like that.

“ _Angradoa! Vi nashi meah!_ ” the doc yelled back, unintelligibly, raising his hands and some of his arms.

Tony copied uncertainly, wincing as the injuries peppering his front pulled. Nothing felt like it was tearing, but he’d have to be careful.

“ _Nashai narak, serashi ja ap gerat!_ ” the guard barked, and the doc raised two more arms, long thin ones with leaf-shaped appendages on the ends. One of them was still clutching a roll of medical tape.

The door rattled open and Tony tensed at the sheer number of black rifle barrels pointed in their direction. _misfire percentage 0.3, by n# barrels, increased by care and cleaning variable <1/yr. Fuck. _

“Ja Stark _arak ni meh karnat._ ” The speaker was some kind of pelagic fish, about as boring a tail as you could imagine, and most of the rest were too; relatively fast, efficient swimmers with massive lateral lines, but shitty depth vision. He could use that; he could be quiet, inconspicuous, he was built for vanishing in the clutter. Most of the time it was a pain in the ass but...

“ _Nyet. No, neirn matak!”_ the doc argued, his hands waving placatingly.

Heads shook and rifle stocks clicked as they were brought to shoulders. “Ja Stark! _Apckha Jericho!_ ”

Tony let out a little puff of water in shock; there was a word he knew. He shook his head, eyes wide, as Jimmy’s mad race away from the RPG replayed behind his eyes. Stark weapons, in the hands of these guys.

“No.” Tony sliced a hand through the water, his forefin held rigidly to snap the water into noisy eddies. “Ny-nyet. I won't.”

The doctor hissed at him to be silent, but it was too late, the snake was out of the net. The doctor was pushed away harshly at gunpoint, his rapidfire _dvoryak_ ignored or snapped at, and Tony hurried to grab his battery, clutching it tight to his chest, despite the raw-edged burn of his injuries. If he lost it, he’d have minutes, maybe half an hour, before his heart just... forgot to beat.

They pulled him forwards, ripping his tail from its grip on the cot and dragging him through the water. He gritted his teeth and tried to keep his tail from dragging against the rocks. Hopefully, they’d have a translator, some kind of hostage negotiation--

Or they might just want him to build a _Jericho_. Tony swore viciously at his past self; who the fuck’s idea was it to do the demo in the _Gulf?_ Where _anyone could see?_ _Past me is a fucking idiot, obviously._  

“ _Atzin!_ _Apckha Jericho!_ ” They barked, loud enough to sting his ‘line as they wrestled his hands away from the battery. He let it drop into his tail, holding it with a death grip as they pinned his hands to a table.

“No. No missile. I’m not building _jack shit_.”

“ _Apckha Jericho!_ ”

“No!” Tony snarled. If they didn’t understand the word, the fucking facial expression should do the trick.

Sure enough, one of them swung their rifle into his face, knocking his teeth together with a snap and shaking his brain in his skull.

“It’s gonna take more than that, you fucking flatfish.” He glanced up through the cloud of blood drifting off his lip. “Fuck you.”

Eyes hardened and a barked order got the leader a knife. They started between his thumb and forefinger.

One bastard on each arm, holding his hand splayed open against the kelpwood, and one guy with a knife.

Tony started off yelling, as the point of the blade pierced through the webbing between thumb and forefinger, to the wood below, then screaming, when they cut the entire web, leaving the skin flapping loose and bleeding into the water.

“ _Apckha Jericho._ ”

Tony curled forwards over his hand, his whole arm throbbing with pain. “ _No._ ”

By the time they tossed him back in with the doctor, he could move all his fingers independently, if only they didn’t hurt so much. He sank to the floor of the cave in a miserable huddle, clutching his battery so hard it was kinking his scales.

 

~~xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx~~

 

“Wha-- what’s your name?” Tony panted, searching for something to distract himself from the cut-pull of the stitches going into the skin of his belly. He was having to hold his hands perfectly still despite the constant urge to knock the needle out of the doctor’s hand; they were hoping his webbing would scab closed if they braced the edges together but it was precarious at best. They didn’t have thread fine enough for stitches that small.

“Ho Yinsen, obligatory kidnapped doctor to the Ten Rings.”

Tony snorted a laugh, thumping his head back against the cot when it made his stomach jump and got him jabbed by the needle. “Tony Stark; obligatory kidnapped merchant of death. We’re a hell of a pair, Yinsen.”

“Hmph.” The tiny suture scissors had a nick in the top shear; Tony listened for it each time the doc cut the thread. _snicksnick. Stab, pull, knot, snick_ , it went. “Some ‘merchant of death’ you are; refusing to merchant, or to die.” The tentacle taking his pulse, one of the long, leaf-tipped ones, clenched over his wrist.

“It was never supposed to--ow-- be like this,” Tony said as Yinsen placed a particularly long suture, over a very ragged piece of his brood pouch. “Was supposed to be protectin’ our soldiers.”

“And yet, here we are, sewing up your own flesh after an encounter with your own weapons.”

Tony gritted his teeth as the doc tied the suture off and picked the needle back up. “We thought-- maybe, anyone legitimate could get to a hospital in time, terrorists wouldn’t have that.”

“So you made a bomb that killed slowly. Was that supposed to make it better?”

“ _Yes!_ ” he hissed, fingers twitching in the finbrace at a vicious jab of the needle. Yinsen grunted noncommittally at him.

“Who ever told you innocent people got better healthcare than terrorists was _lying._ ”

“Yeah, I’m getting that, thanks.”

Yinsen let him stew on it for a while and the needle got a little less stabby. Stew he did, too; there wasn’t a weapon on the market that could punch through a humvee like it had that didn’t have Tony’s name stamped on the side. The rocket, the large-caliber machine guns, the whole fucking mess, all logo’ed, trademarked and sold for a profit by Stark Industries.

Jimmy, swimming up towards the sun, flashed across his eyes, the taste of blood and dust and combustion on his tongue-- then the sharp stab of the needle brought him back to the present.

“Maybe I should stick to making better body armor,” he muttered, peering down his torso at the network of stitched tears.

“Maybe you should,” Yinsen snapped, tugging the last stitch tight with the kind of finality even Tony could recognise. “There. Best to be done with point-five gauge; it will scar, but, you are not so perforated any more.” 

“Thanks. Feels better already,” he lied, glancing at the thick black spiderweb of knots and thread. Each suture was a new wound all of its own, fresh and burning with the tension of holding his pouch together.

 

~~xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx~~

 

The second time, they put a bag over his head. It tasted like rotting kelp and made breathing more of a chore than the chestplate already had.

They stuck him in a room with enough lights to shine through the bag, and wrapped his tail around a bar on the floor, then tied him there, roasting in the brilliance. They hadn’t tried to take away his battery, but the burning in his healing webbing meant he was lucky he was still holding it by the time they pulled the bag off. He twitched his ears out to clear the cloud of foul particulates from around his gills, binded by the spot trained on him.

“ _Varak abeib da au. Charnel. Varuk Ja Tony Stark yeb anah yei ma dollarae._ ”

“Tony? Tony! You’re alive!”

Tony jerked in shock, dazed eyes burning as they went wide; _Obie_.

“You have no idea how glad I am to see you!” Obie said, from inside the TV screen, speakers drifting haphazardly above and making his voice eerily displaced.

“...Obie.” Tony whispered, hoarse from the beating they’d meted out while trying to get the hood on him. He held out his hand, meticulously wrapped in scruffy bandages and tape to try and keep the webbing together. “My hands...”

“Oh, my boy... You know I can’t pay.”

Tony’s heart clenched, making bile rise in his throat and his eyes burn while around him, the room erupted with angry voices. No, of course Obie couldn’t. They-- they had a policy. Tony had... He’d signed it. Right thing to do. Trust the system.

But he wasn’t in the system anymore. There was no SWAT team coming. Someone silenced the room with a sharp snap of tail whose shockwaves made Tony flinch away from a non-existent hail of bullets.

“You have to cooperate, Tony.” Obie was breaking up, the connection staticky and harsh. “Give them what they want, Tony; make yourself useful.”

Tony gritted his teeth and dug his fingers into the hard case of the battery. “... _no._ ”

“Tony, please, you have to play the game.”

Tony shook his head violently and snarled at his guards, knocking his elbow into one’s midriff, then thrashing against the rope holding him to the bar to try and reach the other. In the background, the video cut out with a hiss but Tony was busy trying to cause as much damage as his weakened body would let him.

It was rage, and he couldn’t control it, not even when the click of gun safeties echoed from all ‘round the room.

In the end, someone hit him in the head with a rifle and the fight went out of him.

Not quite unconscious, not quite awake, he sank to the floor and landed with a dull _thud_ next to his battery. It was sheer luck that the cables hadn’t pulled free and Tony watched them settle to the floor next to him.

 

~~xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx~~

 

They padlocked him to his bed by his throat, a choke chain tightening over his gills if he moved, and he lay there blank faced as Yinsen patched up what damage he’d managed to do to the guards.

The first had a broken finray on his forearm, served him fucking right, which Yinsen set and taped down to his arm. He’d be swimming in circles for a few days, and the look of resentment he gave Tony was enough to make him smile through bloody teeth.

Another had a broken rib --thank you, Happy-- and Yinsen just happened to decide it needed binding, squashing the guy’s dorsalfin against his spine. He got the same advice Tony had; breathe shallow and fast, not deep. It was positively poetic.

By the time that was finished, Tony’s head was swimming with exhaustion and he was pretty sure he was still bleeding into his hair, so he didn’t react to the third visitor. Broken nose, very messy, very satisfying crunch.

Yinsen set it, packed the guy’s nostrils with completely unnecessary gauze, and told him to drink plenty of the shitty electrolyte solution Yinsen had been forcing down Tony’s throat since he’d taken out the feeding tube.

Small things.

When the guy turned to leave, and he was the last, Tony was pretty sure, he scanned the room and failed to spot Tony, lying perfectly still on the bed.

Tony grinned, the flash of movement just enough to give him away, and the guy scowled.

Tony was a fucking seahorse; you didn’t feel him unless he wanted to be felt and fuck him if that didn’t feel good.

 

~~xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx~~

 

His belly started to heal, the keyhole incision for the pacemaker closed around the wires, and his head stopped aching. His hands didn’t get that chance.

The third time, they’d hammered a nail up through the table, rusty but still sharp.

“You.” The guy with the beard gestured at Tony. “Bueeeld _Jericho._ ”

Tony looked at the nail, then at the muscles of the guys holding him, and swallowed down bile.

“No.”

When they tossed him back into the cell, he had Yinsen trim off what was left of the fins on his hands. He’d never be able to use them again. _They’d_ never be able to use them again.

They didn’t have any anesthetic left and Yinsen made him bite down on a cloth so the guards wouldn’t come to see why he was screaming.

 

~~xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx~~

 

They left him alone for one day.

Just long enough for his hands to scab in the overly salty water. Yinsen had wrapped his fingers separately and Tony spent hours just moving them independently of each other. It hurt, but it was good for the scarring tissue to be stretched, so Yinsen didn’t stop him.

Yinsen didn’t stop looking at the door, all day, worried that they’d be angry that he’d cut the webbing, but Tony needed all his attention to work on the chestplate. As hard as it was while he was still tied to the cot, they needed something better than a car battery and an idea was starting to niggle at the back of Tony’s mind.

No one was coming for him.

They needed a way out.

He ate mechanically, something hot off the little stove that made the water taste like burnt plastic, and tried not to choke himself on the chain.

They needed a power source, something that could get them both, neither of them built for marathons at speed, far out of range. Yinsen was fast over thirty yards, but after that, he said, he was no faster than Tony.

By the end of the day, Tony still hadn’t thought of a way to make it any smaller than a truck, but he was feeling better, the pain dulling back in his chest and hands both, and Yinsen had sketched out a haptic feedback system in the water, with carefully discrete gestures.

He slept on it fitfully, thinking that if he could get his hands on some paper and a marker he’d be able to crack out the equation for magnetic containment in such a small space but it all got blown right out of his head the next morning.

They had a sealed room, with its door in the ceiling of a larger cavern. Blindingly bright with electric bulbs, about six feet square, apparently pointless. They pushed him up and closed the bars under him while he scrambled for enough buoyancy to lift the battery, the iron in the chestplate _and_ make up for the loss of his hands. He drew his ears in close to his head and curled his tail in around the battery, making himself small in the corner of the cage; foreign words rattled around his ears, then the rumble of machinery and the whistling whine of a compressor.

A gout of bubbles rose between the bars, dull grey with soot and leaching something bitter into the water. Tony kept out of their path as they rose, watching them venomously as they hit the ceiling; they were going to try and smoke him out? Fucking terrible idea, Tony’d smoked like a chimney until he was thirty--

The air didn’t escape. Tony’s eyes widened, darting over the ceiling, looking for a vent or a chimney or _something_ , but the gas spread into a thick, mercuric layer on the stone, growing and splintering with each new bubble. Tony whipped around, palms to the bars just as the compressor kicked into gear and the stream of bubbles turned into a flood. He could physically feel the displaced water churning over his ‘line, his hair. He flattened his fins to his body as it tugged at them, terrified that they would tear, and banged on the grate.

“What the fuck are you doing! I _have a heart condition!_ ”

oh god, he was gonna drown, _oh fuck, oh fuck._..

He took a huge gulp of water as the surface sank past his shoulders, feeling the weight of the air pressing down on his lungs, making it hard to hold onto the water, but he had to, he had to hold out until they--

The water sank past him, and he tried to keep his head. He couldn’t see, the air was too thin, everything was blurry. How far was the water going to fall, anyway? He squeezed his eyes closed against the burn of the air and rolled onto his back; _when drowning, keep gills wet for as long as possible; air contains sufficient oxygen--_

He choked on his lungful, coughing a mouthful of water over his gills at the first burning touch of air on the delicate membranes inside. _they don’t warn you that it_ hurts _. bastards._

The lights burned through his eyelids, felt hot against his exposed tail, and he _needed to breathe_!

He coughed again, this time losing most of a lungful, which splattered out of his gills and onto the water a foot below. Sound echoed weirdly as he started to get light headed, powerful in his ears but almost silent on his lateral line.

Something jabbed him sharp in the spine, the sound of harsh laughter echoing up through the surface, and he sputtered, losing the last of his water in a noisy rush.

He tried to hold his breath, he did. But his lungs started burning, his head swimming, and he gasped in air.

It burned, thin and almost impossible to feel on the tongue or in his throat, but burning everywhere it touched. He gasped, fast and shallow, panicked, and his voice came out like the tearing of metal, the sound hammering at his ears until the pain and burn and weight crushed the consciousness right out of him.

Distantly, he felt the bars under him shift, and then he was falling to land with a god-awful _smack_ on the surface of the water. He gasped for water, coughing great big bubbles out of his lungs, as hard hands shook him and they screamed ‘ _Jericho_ ’ in his ringing ears.

“ _No._ ”

They pushed him back up, into the air and he tried not to struggle, because the only thing more important that breathing was keeping that damn battery safe.

 

~~xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx~~

 

In the end, it was the air, rising in a ragged silver stream from his mouth as he coughed it out that gave him the idea, the fix for miniaturized arc containment.

It took two days, eight guard changes, of roasting lights and burning air, lying gasping on the grate, hoping they’d drop him before that tremble in his chest turned into a heart attack, but he had it.

He could stop stalling.

He kept his eyes closed, that time. Through the shaking and demands, despite the _vicious_ backhand to the side of his head, he just hung there, exhausted and relieved that he didn’t have to do to this anymore.

“Bueeld Jericho.”

“Yes.”


	2. Those are Pearls that were his Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to blow this shit hole.

 

They dragged him back to Yinsen like a dead thing; they’d tied the battery to his tail, in case he passed out, and he needed it now. There was no energy left in him, he hadn’t breathed properly in _two days_ , no food, no rest. The closest he’d come to sleep was blacking out when he hit the water.

Yinsen was pale, his tentacles ashen grey and his face white against the dark stone; Tony was a sight, he supposed, head lolling on the water. His scales had clouded over somewhere on the first day and the webbing on his hips and forearms was dull grey instead of translucent red.

They dropped him on the uneven cave floor and made Yinsen wait until they had closed the door behind them before coming to him.

The doc clicked his tongue against his teeth as he eased Tony onto his back, his hands deftly checking the chestplate’s wires. Tony’s stomach crawled up into his throat as Yinsen re-seated one of the connectors; it was only luck that it hadn’t come all the way out.

Tony closed his eyes as the doc checked the rest of him over, with that same deft touch, and accepted a bottle of fresh water when it was pressed into his hand. He was thirsty as hell, and fresh would work far quicker than the normal kind, for all that it tasted foul.

“ _You_ , my friend, are lucky to be alive.”

Tony grinned with one corner of his mouth, bitter. “I gave in. They’re bringing the materials tomorrow.”

Yinsen’s hands went hard against Tony’s stomach, checking the stitches, then softened again. “Did you now. How long do you think they will believe you?”

Tony hadn’t realised he’d been so transparent, but Yinsen could know, it was just the cameras that couldn’t and they weren’t wired for sound.

“Oh... two weeks? Depends.”

“On whether they have their own engineer. Or even a barely trained mechanic.”

Tony huffed; the state of this place, he’d put money on there not being a mechanic for fifty miles but they weren’t exactly betting their money, were they?

He finished his water in two more swallows and just wanted to sleep off the ache of burnt gills but Yinsen bullied him up onto the cot and put a bowl of shredded ‘moot’, which Yinsen insisted was edible but Tony doubted, in his hand. His fingers were numb, which, probably not a good sign. The moment the cold carbs touched his tongue, he wasn’t thinking about anything but eating, shoveling it in with a clumsily held spoon as fast as he could manage.

“Y’know, all I could think about was water,” he mumbled around the dregs of his dinner, “I didn’t notice they weren’t feeding me.”

Yinsen grunted, glancing up at the doors before fishing out those fucking scissors. Tony’d polished the nick out, before-- yeah, but there was nothing good associated with those scissors. “You are pallid, Ja Stark, it is obvious to anyone with any sense. Lie back, your stitches need tending.”

Tony shuddered and did as he was told, shoving the last of the food into his mouth, then lifting his arms above his head and burying his face in his shoulder. Yinsen opened his jacket --he still didn’t have a shirt other than the chestplate-- and appologised quietly as he undid Tony’s fly. Tony grimaced as the fabric fell away --no underwear his shape here-- and Yinsen covered his groin with a blanket; at least the doc had some respect for his decency.

Even Yinsen’s fingers, pressing lightly on his pouch, made him feel sick and shaky, and the idea that someone might see, that they might not have judged the camera angles properly, made him want to break something and then hide in a dark corner. But Yinsen was quick and efficient, his fingers probing along the tears. Three places, the touch felt hot and sickening, like he had a splinter deep in the skin.

“There is infection taking hold, here...” Yinsen said, “I do not have antibiotics, and what they would do to get them...”

Tony gritted his teeth and nodded. “Don’t ask. Not unless I’m--” He cut himself off with a self-disgusted laugh. “Nah. Not even then.”

“Thank you... Tony. There is risk that...thank you.”

Yinsen’s touch skimmed the mouth of his pouch, pulling at the torn edge only slightly, and Tony shuddered, clamping down on nausea; that was for babies and lovers-- this was-- it felt _wrong_. The doc pulled back for a moment, picking up a jar of ointment that tasted strongly of resin, and propping it, open, on the cot.

“I need to check the inner membrane, Ja Stark; please, relax.”

_oh god._ Tony nodded; he’d had exams before, he was fine. _fuck_

Yinsen used the ointment to buffer the roughness of his skin, covering his fingers in it in lieu of gloves, then slid the tips of his fingers along his pouch's slit. It was horribly, painfully intimate and Tony squeezed his eyes closed so he couldn’t see Yinsen peering into him, looking for his broken places. Gentle fingers probed at the infections from the inside, making waves of nausea choke the breath out of him and his protest came out as a whimper from behind clenched teeth.

“Shhh, Ja Stark, nearly there.” The sound of the scissors made him flinch, but the sharp bite of pain didn’t come, just the strange release of tension as the suture popped open. Yinsen counted them off, seven, then apologised under his breath as he pulled the threads out.

Tony pushed his head back against the cot and tried to think of something else, anything else, as Yinsen set about lancing and cleaning out the wounds, pressing on them from inside Tony’s pouch.  “Hey, Yinsen?” he asked, trying to keep the horrified whine out of his voice.

“Hmm?”

“Don’t you think it’s odd, that I’m still alive?”

“A question I ask myself every time you come back through that door.” Yinsen dabbed a little ointment over the suture site he’d just lanced, the taste of resin wiping away the taste of infection in the water.

“But, Obie refused to pay ransom, and there's no way I can build a million dollars' worth of munitions...”

Yinsen’s hands stilled, but he didn’t look up. “It is strange.”

There was something off, something Obie had said... The doc lanced the third pocket of infection and Tony was distracted by trying not to make too much noise, only dragging his attention back by dint of will.

“And, how did they _know_ where we were? Th’ convoy was moving at sixty kph, randomized route, didn’t use roads...”

“Someone told them where to look.”

Tony’s heart ratcheted up with adrenalin; this was so fucked up, and he couldn’t even think it, but _what if._ But, no. Why would Obie do something like that? The guy was his _godfather_.

_Play the game, Tony._  

Well, fuck.

These weren’t thoughts he should be having, with another guy’s hand inside his pouch; this was _so fucked up_.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow, he’d build his power source; everything else could wait.

 

~~xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx~~

 

The materials arrived, dragged in by a couple of crabs Tony’d never seen before, and suspected were prisoners too, but Tony was half-dead with heat stroke and fever.

Yinsen kept him wrapped up in their tatty blankets, changed the dressings whenever they looked stained, but they didn’t have antipyretics or non-sedative painkillers and Tony needed to be awake to direct the handling of the missiles. He had Yinsen dismantling them for parts, keeping him looking busy, while he did what he could, propped up in bed with a magnesium welder.

Twenty years of stagnation and arc reactor tech was finally getting an upgrade.

He had to make it look like a part of the Jericho, so he was working inside the unscrewed nosecone of a P-67R, but all that was doing was making him clumsy and keeping the drips of hot metal from hitting his clothes. Yinsen was almost there with the palladium harvesting; they’d fired up the compressor, got the forge going.

He kept telling himself that it was too soon for PTSD to have settled in, turned his mind into a one-trick pony, but the flashes of Jimmy’s death he kept getting were calling him a liar. Whatever; he was fucking handling it. At least the compressor was smaller than the one that’d been used to drown him.

He put it out of his head and reached for the next part, his hand swaying in the water as his muscles protested. Piece by piece, the casing came together, all the pieces carefully calibrated to maintain the toroidal EM field. You couldn’t use metal structurally so near a big fuckoff magnet, so they were using glass, toughened in the forge. It’d provide enough of a buffer between the magnetic field and the chestplate to stop it interfering with the magnets holding the shrapnel in place.

He eased the base ring into place, the one that’d keep the reactor in place against the chestplate, and he was done. All it needed was the palladium and the solenoid.

Yinsen was handling the casting, so Tony leant back and closed his eyes, listening to the water whistling through his aching gills. 

He woke up to Yinsen’s sorry expression and the door banging open. He heaved his battery up, hopefully for the last time, and struggled to rise in the water. His buoyancy was coming back, slowly, but it was one hell of an ask to carry the battery and chest plate, and he relied on Yinsen to get him up.

And then it was the bag over his head, and rough hands on his arms.

They tied him to the bar again, in the bright lights, and there was Obie, looking worried and exhausted.

“Tony, I’m glad you’re alright... How’re the hands?”

Tony held one up, slowly curling his fingers separately.

“I’m so sorry... It was all I could do to negotiate letting me see you alive, I don’t have much I can pressure them with...”

Tony couldn’t look at the screen, his eyes ached from the light, and his head felt heavy. He kept the battery in front of his stomach, because there was no way he wanted that getting back to Pepper, and Obie was using JARVIS’ translation to--

Hah. JARVIS was listening.

If JARVIS was listening, and he had to be, for that software to function, then how had this shithole avoided being stormed by special forces? Because there wasn’t a signal on the net that JARVIS couldn’t backtrack.

Nausea rose in Tony’s throat, and his fingertips tingled as shock started to set in.

“Where am I, Obie?” he asked quietly, trusting JARVIS to amplify it over the chatter of unintelligible local dialects. Tony didn’t know and didn’t care what they were saying, whether it was threats or something more insidious, but Obie cut off with a sad look.

But Tony saw it, the microexpression, caught by JARVIS and thrown up just long enough for Tony perceive. Irritation. Stress. Anger.

_fuckfuckufkcufkcufk_

“If I knew that, we wouldn’t be here, would we?” Obie’s voice was thick with sympathy, but it felt cloying and sticky. Repugnant.

“No, you... you know, you have to...” He muttered, wishing Obie would stop lying to him and give him a reason, a good reason, for this _bullshit_.

A square of pixels in one corner of the screen started flashing; a stop code. JARVIS wanted him to stop.

“You know exactly where I am, don’t you?” He met Obie’s eyes through the stream. “Why didn’t you try and keep me from breaking patent law? Why haven’t you come to get me?”

“Tony, my boy, I’m doing everything I can!”

Tony snapped at him: “You’re _negotiating!_ Fuck what you said about ‘playing the game’! _You’re making the rules!_ ”

Obie was talking, using that disgusting soothing tone, the one he’d been using since the funeral, but Tony wasn’t going to listen to that shit ever again. JARVIS was flashing frantically in the corner, but it wasn’t getting through, Tony wasn’t paying enough attention to decode it.

“You had them attack us. The convoy. _That's_ why they had my weapons,” Tony said, feeling slack and weak. “I’d have known if any shipments went missing, unless you knew to hide it from me. And you did, didn’t you?”

Obie had gone quiet, a sharp gesture cutting off the babble of his captors.

“How much am I worth, Obie? What did these guys have that you so _desperately_ needed?!”

Stone cold, tail coiling on the edge of the frame, Obie waved a dismissive hand. “The war was coming to a close. Nothing could top Jericho, so we needed the escalation.”

Tony shook his head, eyes wide and breath fighting nausea for space in his throat. He flexed his fingers against the battery, against the only thing keeping him alive.

“You were supposed to protect me!”

“Tony, Tony, I’m supposed to protect the Board’s interests too! It’s all ‘me, me, me’ with you.”

Tony swore at him, loudly and violently, but Obie continued like he couldn’t even hear.

“Think about the bottom line, Tony; without the Gulf conflict, we’re back to making hydroplanes and satellites--”

“Fuck you, I’m done. I’m not gonna do--”

_< COOPERATE>_ JARVIS flashed it across the screen, almost too fast to see, and Tony jerked back, open mouthed. Had Obie managed to reprogram him? Or-- no. No, that was their font, their code, and Tony had never shared JARVIS with Obie, not in that much detail. What use was a sentient AI with pacifist leanings to a war monger?

Tony could have screamed; JARVIS was right, there was no way he could say _no_ , now. Not without ending up back in the cage; JARVIS had been his voice of reason for years _,_ and all he was was a few hijacked pixels on a screen.

“ _Fuck.”_

“It’s for the best, Tony. A few months, a few big bangs, the DoD will renew the contracts, I’ll bring you home.”

Tony slumped, head bowed in the picture of surrender, and nodded.

“They cut off my fins, Obie...” he said, plaintive and weak. It wasn’t hard to fake, not when his pouch was an infected mess of too-thick thread and ragged edges.

“Just think of how dextrous you’ll be once those bandages come off.”

Tony restrained himself, holding himself unnaturally still as JARVIS translated some parting message between his captors and Obie, then while they bagged him and dragged him back to Yinsen.

They were quiet, no laughing or jeering, and just dumped him on the floor at the first opportunity. He had frightened them more with complete silence than he had with bone-breaking force and screams.

 

~~xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx~~

 

“We’ve got to step it up,” Tony told Yinsen, leaning close and desperate.

Yinsen was slathering him in topical antiseptic, which was the closest they had to antibiotics, and seemed to be doing the trick; Tony felt less feverish, at least.

“This ‘Obie’ has far too much power. Do not take him lightly,” Yinsen warned, flashing him a look over the top of his glasses.

Tony felt nauseous for a second and blew a rough breath out of his gills to settle his stomach. “He knows me, he’s got some kind of black market going-- Dangerous people on payroll,” Tony said, picking at the bandage on his left hand.

Yinsen tugged his hands apart with a quelling glare.

“He managed to set all this up, had my escort _killed_...” Tony took a deep breath and steadied himself again. “I’m not underestimating him.”

“Perhaps more stealth is required? If you cannot rely on your dramatic exit to bring help...”

Tony nodded, frowning in thought. If Rhodey had made it out, which given his position in the caravan wasn’t unlikely, he’d still be looking. If Tony could get _his_ attention, but no one else’s, they might have a fighting chance. And if Tony could get a hold of the video conference connection, JARVIS could have Rhodey’s search team in the right place, at the right time.

“Will he know you have something planned?”

Tony fucking hoped not. “Probably. He doesn’t know about JARVIS, but I--” Tony pursed his lips with a frown. “When I was seventeen, there was a kidnapping attempt, and I got myself out with a glowstick and half a razor blade. Yeah, he knows I’ll do something. That why he tried the mind game bit. Convince me they would just kill me if...”

“They _will_ just kill you.”

Tony groaned. “You are a shaft of sunshine.”

“Ah, please, keep your giant ball of burning gas to yourself, Ja Stark. My poor eyes cannot take it.” Yinsen waved an idle tentacle at the roof of the cave and sliced open a suture without warning.

“... _ow._ ” The lack of anticipation made it easier, Tony supposed, but the tug of the thread out of the skin was just as unpleasant.

“These are healing well; I have five stitches ready to come out.”

Tony glanced down at his injuries, mostly slathered in antiseptic, and looked away again before he could make himself ill.

_Snip-tug,_ five times. He gritted his teeth and ran through the hydrodynamics of pelagic-style propulsion with his highly unusual dorsoventral flex. _fucking seahorse tail._

Tony had strong suspicions that without pectoral fins the length of his entire arms, he wouldn’t be able to -- _snip-tug--_ translate the dorsoventral vectors of his tail, even with a big fin prosthesis, into forwards motion of his mass _and_ the armour's without relying on the usual seahorse methods; there were no poles or bars or rocks in pelagic swimming and he wasn’t built for sustained tail strokes anyway. He needed something to make his gait more powerful--

Or he could change it completely.

Yinsen’s siphon, pride of place on his right flank, gave him his solution; he was, after all a _rocket scientist._

His mind raced, and the moment Yinsen wrapped him back up, he was hastily scrambling to the workbench, tail pushing off the cot and giving him enough upwards momentum to compensate for the battery.

His papers wafted up into the water, greasepen and all, and he snatched them back, scribbling against a mostly clear sheet. They had propulsion. All the propulsion they could possibly want.

“Is that... a rocket?”

“Oh hell yes.”

“You are mad. Completely.”

“That too.”

 

~~xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx~~

 

Tony forged the plating by hand, up to his shoulders in hot, steamy air. Yinsen bound his fins down, made him wear thick leather gloves and _deeply_ disapproved, but each plate was different, there was no way to build an autopress with that much variation. They needed the speed and precision of hammering each piece, folding and crimping and stretching, by hand _._

He put up with the cracking skin and aching ‘line up his forearms and brought the hammer down on the cherry-red plate regardless of the bone-aching force required.

When he pulled the plate out of the air pocket, the water boiled off immediately; big gouts of steam bubbling towards the ceiling with a earsplitting roar. He tossed in the next batch of shell casings before the steam had even had a chance to dissipate.

Piece by piece, the improved chestplate came together under Yinsen’s hands, the shining reactor muffed with oiled kelpcloth to keep it out of the notice of their  observers’ low-resolution cameras. They could afford to act a little strange, now; this was a race to the finish, before Obie found extra leverage, but there was no point in advertizing to the grunts on guard duty.

The first chestplate wouldn’t stand up to the rigors of full-on flight, but this one would. Steel rather than kevlar, it bolted shut with cantilevered breathing space calibrated to within a thousandth of an inch, and enough iron in the steel that the ring magnet would snap to the indentation pounded into the inner surface. The arc reactor would sit in the centre of the ring, right over Tony’s heart, and power the entire shitstorm.

The rocket propulsion was based on the same system as the missile they wanted him to build; good in air as well as water, and lensed through chunks of aluminum silicate the size of his palm. They superheated the water inside the cowl, like a liquid fuel rocket, and the exponential expansion would blast him forwards, if he could get the fin steering right.

The speeds he’d be able to reach... He was predicting four hundred kilometers an hour if he used surface effects, but he’d never be able to breathe at those speeds, and Yinsen would be shredded. They’d manage more than enough to outrun any boats in the compound, if he left any floating, and anything else was a bonus.

Power conduits, servo motors, and a trick up his sleeve for blasting out of the gates. The tail plates came together like a leviathan shellfish, the crude, sharp fin up the back taking its price in blood as it scratched up Yinsen’s hands.

There was no time to rest, it could be a matter of hours before Obie made up his mind to have the compound blown out of the ocean; there were enough Jericho missiles in the Gulf to do it thirty times over. In desperation, with no time to try and get to JARVIS, he put his hope in JARVIS getting to _him_. If Obie was obsessive enough, felt threatened enough by Tony’s revelation, he’d have a live feed from the cell, and Tony felt slimy all up his back at the thought. But, that meant JARVIS was _there_ , watching, waiting. Tony ripped out an LED from an arming light, and a powersource, from the body of the guidance system, and held it in his left hand, flashing “NOW. NOW. NOW.” in binary while he took an angle grinder to the helmet.

Hope was all that was keeping him afloat; hope and fury.

Once Tony finished grinding out the eye slits, he shook chips of steel out of his hair and hauled himself over to the door to rig the explosion; it was assembly time.

 

~~xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx~~

 

The caves were a morass of dark, bloody water, the lights flickering in and out. Gunshots in the dark made the armour ring, blinding his sense of pressure and deafening his ears. But they didn’t hit his flesh, and he marched onwards, armoured tail striking stone and bodies, machine gun spitting death into the dark.

Ahead, somewhere, was Yinsen, desperate and unprotected, leading the way. Tony could barely see in this gloom, but even so, he was protected; Yinsen was supposed to be behind him and safe, but he could already taste blood and his heart ticked on despite the sinking horror that some of it, a lot of it, must be Yinsen’s.

Ahead he saw the gleaming of sunlight, gloriously blue and rich, stretching into the vast distance of the desert, but Yinsen lay there between him and the exit, dropped to the ground by three gaping holes. In the cave mouth, a man with a rocket launcher grinned, his teeth shark-white, and pulled the trigger. Tony threw his arm up, pulled the release, and the explosive shot sideways into the rock. Shark-tooth vanished out into the desert, blasted back, and Tony slammed into the sand, digging in to halt his momentum. Yinsen didn’t move.

He pulled himself up, dragging the heavy steel with him, and-- Yinsen’s eyes were open, his glasses cracked into slivers of glitter littering his vest, but there was blood trickling out of his gills.

“Stay with me, Yinsen, c’mon...” The doctor’s blood was black and thick, oozing into the water and sinking in curlicues towards the sand. Tony’s hands were covered in hide gauntlets and steel; he couldn’t feel the pressure he was putting on the gaping hole in Yinsen’s stomach. The blood was leaking out anyway, from Yinsen’s mouth, the side of his siphon. His ragged shirt wicked it along in growing patches from too many places for Tony’s inadequate hands.

“Don... don’t waste it...” Yinsen said on a rush of black breath that streamed towards the dark recesses of the caves. Tony couldn’t grasp what he meant, not straight away; he had plenty of power in the arc reactor, and-- “Don’t waste your life.”

“...Yinsen? No, c’mon, get up!” Yinsen’s eyes drifted shut and one last breath of bloodstained water eased out of him.

Yinsen died, three meters away from freedom, lying on a bag of stolen rice.

 

END

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keep an eye out for PART II: Battle’s Won, Bring on the War.


End file.
